Forty people, most of them Jews -- 10 of them rabbis -- and a healthy contingent of Christians, including members of the clergy, have come to Israel and the West Bank this week to see close up and personal the faces of the conflict, hear its voices, and struggle with the emotions that well up as a result. We are part of a trip sponsored by Rabbis for Human Rights-North America.
It's been impossible to blog much each day and also sleep, but I want to collect some of the things I've seen and record some of the things we have experienced . . . .
On the bus heading north out of Jerusalem toward the village of Qaryout on the West Bank Tuesday morning, our guide handed each of us a big map that marked the Green Line, Israel's borders before the 1967 war. It included a red line that marked the path of the so-called security barrier, or separation barrier.
The lines do not match.
In many sections, the separation barrier goes well into Palestinian territory. It looks as gerrymandered as a Southern Congressional district drawn to put all the minority votes in one area. Unlike Congressional districts, though, these lines can't be re-drawn when the political balance changes. These are lines of concrete.
As we drive along the road where on one side is the pre-1967 Jordanian area and the other was the "no man's land" that served as a buffer to Israel, we see the buildings and neighborhoods and the police district that have been built there over the years. Big fat facts on the ground.
We can tell the settlements by their red tile roofs, says Arik Ascherman, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel. The Palestinian villages have minarets. The houses with the red tile roofs dominate the high places, and so dominate the land.
Stare at the puzzle and get dizzy. Stare at the puzzle and feel despair.
The program we're participating that day, we are told, began with an idea of Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Phyllis Berman, who visited Israel and the West Bank from Philadelphia a few years ago. They met with farmers whose family's olive trees had been uprooted by Jewish settlers in an ongoing attempt to make it impossible for them to work their land -- and so to make it impossible for them to stay on it. When Rabbi Waskow saw the farmers' anguish and grief at the horizontal trees, mourning them as if they were family members, he came up with the idea of organizing Jewish volunteers to plant new olive trees and to help in the olive harvest. We will be planting trees in the fields that belong to the village and then meeting with some of the farmers.
As our bus pulls up, I am struck by the man with a head scarf riding a donkey. Several of the older men are in traditional dress, and I'm reminded that the work of tending olive trees isn't much different now than it was hundreds, even thousands, of years ago. As we're getting out of the bus, an Israeli police vehicle passes us and the soldiers get out and engage with the Palestinians standing in front of a huge mound of dirt that blocks the road. Later, we hear the story:
It used to take five minutes or so to get from the village of Qaryout to the fields. Qaryout is surrounded on three sides by settlements, the closest of which is Shiloh, in which the Biblical story of Samuel and Chana takes place. For decades, farmers had planted wheat here, while in the fields nearby, others had planted olive groves.
Now the trip from village to field can take up to two hours because of this barrier, which has been erected in the middle of the road. It was put there by the Israeli Army, we were told, because of violent terror attacks coming from the village to the settlements, but the head of the village council tells us later there have been no such attacks. This barrier, concrete walls, chain link fences and barbed wire. I wonder if there are any paths at all that are direct and uncomplicated, any way to connect without super human effort?
Is there anything more hopeful than a tree sapling, anything more fragile?
There are 100 of the small olive saplings in the truck on Tuesday and we carry them, one in each hand, over an expanse of rock and clay to the field. At first we line them up about 12 feet apart, but then are instructed to spread them out over the entire space, about two and a half acres.
We are making a statement as much as we are contributing to the agriculture of the area. The trees will underscore the Palestinian claim to the land – that is, if they survive.
We’re planting only 100 trees, says Arik Ascherman, because it is entirely possible that the settlers from one of the three settlements that occupy the high places will destroy them. Within an hour, the trees could be uprooted, destroyed. So we don’t want to risk the 600 trees that it might take to create an olive grove in this spot.
Lance has spoken to the owner of the field. He says it used to be planted with wheat, but we are planting trees in order to amplify the statement that this is indeed Palestinian land.
The land is rocky and full of clay. Making even small dents with a hoe won’t get deeper than a few inches. I wonder how ancient people managed it. One of the Palestinian men comes over with the one pick we have brought and makes quick work of it.
Each of us has a chance to plant. I undo the plastic covering over the root ball and place it in the hole. I spread the soil around. It is as much rock and clay as it is anything that resembles the garden soil I am used to. They say it may rain tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.
There is the sound of laughter nearby. One of the Palestinian farmers has a huge smile on his face. One of our group has given him an Obama button. "Obama," the man says as the others rush over to see. "Obama!) Later, another group member passes out more buttons and plastic wrist bands with the name of our president-elect on them. I As we finish planting the trees in the Palestinian field on Tuesday, we notice that a jeep has driven up. It is a settler, a man with a long beard and a knitted kippah and -- this is what I see immediately -- an automatic weapon at his side. He is deep in an intense conversation with some of the delegation, with Arik Ascherman translating. Arik says the man is the security chief for the nearby settlement and has been very gracious to engage with us and answer our questions.
The settler says the Palestinians, who have worked the land for decades, do not own it. Instead, a man named Moshe who lives in Tel Aviv is the rightful owner. As the settler talks, an Israeli soldier, who looks to be in his early 20s, stands by, the expression on his face unreadable.
Rabbi Brian Walt, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, poses a question. What is the argument that the settler is making about the land? Is it a Biblical argument, that God gave the land to the Jews, or is it that an individual Jew -- Moshe in Tel Aviv is his name, the settler says —has legal title to the land? And if it is the latter, would he agree that a Palestinian who has legal title to land in, say, East Jerusalem, has a valid claim as well?
The settler says he is arguing both things, both a divine inheritance and legal contract. When Rabbi Brian presses him on the Palestinian legal claim, the settler says he would accept Palestinian claims to the land except that Palestinians don¹t live by the laws of Israel, that they steal and kill. Rabbi Tirzah Firestone challenges him: You know that not all Palestinians are thieves and murderers, she says.
The settler turns away. You don't understand, he says.
After the settler left, Arik Ascherman indicated the trees on the windy hillside before us. "This is the battle for the land," he said. The "combatants" in this struggle are the olive trees before us. A few rows belong to Palestinian farmers, the ones right next to them, in protective barrels, were planted to by settlers. On the other side of the road, it was the same -- a stand of olive trees in barrels and another stand without: Palestinian and settler, settler and Palestinian.
The tactic is heartbreakingly clear: settlers uproot or burn olive trees—or otherwise block the farmers from giving the trees the care they need—in order to establish some "claim" to the land. That's why it's critical for the farmers to have legal help to prove their ownership . . . If they go to the authorities within three years with their ownership documents, it's a good chance they can have that ownership recognized by the military authority in charge of the Occupied Territories. Any longer and the claim will be harder to prove.
Apparently, if the settlers "work the land" for a few years, they can claim to own it, but the claim of Palestinian farmers whose families have been there for decades, even centuries, working the land have no such claim.
Trees are long term, trees take time to grow and mature. These trees look as if they have been there awhile. They reflect none of the urgency that we feel all around us.